State Of Origin, Other Semi-Related Notes From Down Under

Hello from Sydney!  The day job has had me down under for the week, and my hosts here have made sure that there hasn't been much free time to keep up with Eagles-related goings-on (which I must imagine pleases my corporate masters).  Mercifully, this has been one of the slowest Birds news weeks in recent memory, so it doesn't look like I missed too much. 

In the absence of actual Eagles commentary, some football-related notes from Down Under, as I await the departure of my return flight:

Sav Rocca.  I had grandiose plans of chatting up as many Aussies as possible about Sav Rocca: what was he like as an Aussie Rules player, do they follow him in the NFL, that sort of thing.  I was hoping to get some good scuttlebutt on both Rocca himself as well as the local opinion of his exploits in the NFL.  This "didn't really work out."  I must have been asking the wrong people, as most I spoke with could only manage a vague reference to "North Melbourne," followed by a set of questions for me about the NFL.  Whoa whoa whoa.  I'm the one asking the questions around here.  One guy even tried to start explaining to me that he was pretty sure that Rocca had played in the Super Bowl this year.  Grrrr. 

State of Origin.  I had the pleasure of catching a bit of the State of Origin rugby match on Wednesday night on TV.  State of Origin is essentially a mid-season All-Star series where all the guys who came up in New South Wales (Sydney) play the guys who grew up in Queensland (Brisbane).  The locals assured me that the games were taken quite seriously by the players, and the tenor of the contact on the field led me to believe that this was true (these guys were hitting).  Of course, this led to some idle speculation on my part regarding what the NFL equivalent of State of Origin would look like -- would you do it by state?  By college conference?  Also, they've done similar things with the NHL All-Star Game in the past (North America versus World, that sort of thing?).  Obviously, this would never actually happen in pro football, what with the whole "it's too dangerous to ever let these guys play anything but a fully sanctioned and official game" thing.            

U-S-A!  U-S-A!  So when I got on the plane Saturday afternoon, I was pretty bummed about the US Soccer team.  After a couple disappointing qualifiers (even the win was disappointing), they showed a little life against Italy and then completely puked on themselves versus Brazil.  Given what I'd seen of Egypt, I didn't give them much of a chance of getting a result in their third game, much less advancing on an exotic goal-differential scenario.  Well well well. I guess I hadn't taken into account the possibility of the soccer equivalent of a 13.5-favorite losing at home in Week 17, much less standing up to Spain in the semi-final.  If the key to USMNT success is making sure my *ss is on another continent (and I see no reason to suspect that it isn't), then I'm booking flights to South Africa for next summer ASAP.

(I look forward to reading your comments in 21 hours; Australia is "far.")